Category: osx Server

com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10f860.cron[43786]): Could not setup Mach task special port 9: (os/kern) no access If you're seeing this warning/error in your OSX Server log files, it is more than likely caused by cron running jobs for mailman subsystem. Even if the Mail process is disabled in Server Admin, OSX will try to run these cron jobs. The way around this (only do this if you're NOT running mail server or mailman mailing list manager on your box) is to comment out all lines in /usr/lib/cron/tabs/_mailman file (insert a # character at the beginning of each line that doesn't have it). This fixed the problem for me.....hopefully it will also work for you :-).

This mainly applies to how you deal with a backup DHCP server and it's configuration, but might also be useful for backing up other service settings. One of the things that kinda bugs me about how some services are configured in OSX Server is the fact that the configurations are stored in the directory. For example, if you have a DHCP server servicing a subnet with a ton of reservations hardcoded in it, there is no way of editing and/or moving the information from the command line (ie: there is no single config file that contains the current configuration) to another server. That's where the "serveradmin" commandline program comes to rescue. If you have two identical servers (ie: both running the same OSX server version), you can use serveradmin to…

We recently upgraded our servers from old XServe G5's running Tiger to the latest greatest running Snow Leopard. In this small howto I will deal with the procedure I followed to setup mysql master-slave replication between two new servers. I start out with two (master, slave) empty DB's, setup the replication and then import my data from a third server (my old G5 X-Serve). Of course like anything else I will try to show you how to get out of -- what I like to call -- Steve Jobs Hell Holes :-). There are other ways of doing this procedure, for more info check out this page. - First things first....the magic command that stops mysql server from command line, just in case you screw something up and need to…

Okay so this only works in Boot Camp 3.0+ which comes with Snow Leopard (10.6). If you ever find yourself in Windows and need to quickly -- using command line -- change your boot option to reboot into OSX (process known under OSX as blessing) you can use the following command:c:\progra~1\Bootca~1\bootcamp.exe -StartupDisk "Mac OS" Shutdown /r /t 0This will reboot your windows session and boot the machine back using the Volume named "Mac OS". If you omitt -StartupDisk option, then the system will boot into the first Mac OS X volume located by BootCamp.exe. Done :-)

You all probably know about the trick with holding down 6 and 4 keys on your keyboard to force OSX 10.6 to boot using the 64-bit kernel. What you might not know is that it's temporary and the next time you reboot, you're back to using the 32 bit kernel. Now I can't guarantee that your machine will not catch fire and blow up (just kidding).....but if you know what you're doing and want to have 64-bit kernel goodness all the time you can do the following:sudo vi /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plistModify the file to make it look like this:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"><dict><key>Kernel</key><string>mach_kernel</string><key>Kernel Flags</key><string>arch=x86_64</string></dict></plist>basically add "arch=x86_64" (without the quotes) to the line that reads<string></string>That's it....reboot and enjoy Full 64-bitness....to undo this (if something breaks), edit the…

I came across a issue and the solution required a bit of tweaking in php.ini. After looking around my Leopard Server I finally found php.ini.default under /etc directory. After making the changes and restarting apache, I got nothing, zip, zilch. Well after digging around the output of phpinfo<?phpphpinfo ();?>I found that /etc is the expected location of php.ini. So after copying php.ini.default to php.ini and restarting apache everything started working nicely. Lesson learned....By default the php module uses baked-in values, if you need to change something (eg: maximum upload file size) you need to copy php.ini.default to php.ini (in /etc directory). Make the changes to php.ini and restart apache.

Well, you learn something new everyday. I was always under the impression that you needed Apple Remote Desktop application to connect to a mac that was sharing it's screen (or vncviewer app). Today I stumbled across another way of doing this without any of these apps......just using the build in "Screen Sharing" application. The easy way (and how I stumbled across this) was to open up Finder/Go/Connect to Server menu option (Apple-K) and type vnc://remote.server.dns.name.or.ip in the "server address" field. This is something that works nicely under Linux (gnome desktop) and I always wanted it in mac......well it was there all along.....And for the command-line junkies there is a even easier way. Open up terminal and type the following command to connect to the remote server:open vnc://remote.server.dns.name.or.ipNICE :-)

OMT in San Francisco #3: 'Let it beep' from One More Thing on Vimeo.Really cool video of Jim Reekes talking about his thought process in designing sounds for the mac, including the big fat C major chord which your mac plays every time you start it. Jim Reekes was a programmer at Apple Computer for 12 years. His work has significantly affected operating systems, most notably System 7 and QuickTime. He also is responsible for creating many of the system sounds for the Macintosh operating system. Some of the most famous creations during that time were the Mac startup sound and the system sound sosumi. Full 1 hour video can be seen on Youtube.

In this guide I'll show you how to stream live HDV/DV video to your iphone using a linux box (Ubuntu 9.10) with firewire input running vlc/ffmpeg and a Imac with OSX 10.6.2 running mediastreamsegmenter and apache2. Start out with the iPhone streaming media overview. Without understanding this document you'll have a hard time getting things working. First things first, you need to have a working Ubuntu 9.10 machine. I'm using a small footprint 2.4Ghz Core2Duo machine with PCI firewire 400 card in it. For video input I'm using a Canon HV30 set to HDV mode (1080i/60) connected via firewire. Next you need to follow the instructions on this page (steps 0-5) to get a working ffmpeg with x264 and aac encoding. Without this working you're not going anywhere....sorry. If you're…

One of the original reasons I bought my first ipod (first gen 5 Gig) was that I could hook it up to my mac and use it as a firewire drive. I could literally run around with this in my pocket and boot OSX off the ipod. Well that came to an end with the intro of iPhone/iTouch. Apple took the "disk mode" out. Well that was then, go grab a FREE copy of iPhone explorer and all that USB stick functionality can be your again. Oh, and did I say there is no need for Jail Break either :-)Features:100% Free iPhone browser for Mac and Windows100% Drag-and-drop interface for easily copying files to and from your iPhoneCreate, delete and rename files and folders on your iPhone or iPod TouchWorks…